Featured

Trump: Iran asked me to be Supreme Leader, but I said no thanks

Trump’s “Iran asked me to be Supreme Leader” joke at an NRCC fundraiser uses a real, deadly leadership crisis in Iran to normalize assassination-as-policy and blur what’s confirmed about the war and succession.

Mar 26, 2026

Featured

‘Men need to be perp-walked’ after Epstein files release, Massie tells BBC

A GOP lawmaker says the Epstein document releases are still falling short—because redactions and withheld material may be blocking accountability and survivor-centered justice.

Mar 25, 2026

Buried.News

The stories buried under the noise

Primary focus

Trump fires Kristi Noem as Homeland Security Secretary

A Cabinet secretary was forced out amid contracting and oversight scrutiny, signaling that executive control—not transparent accountability—can dictate leadership of the agency driving mass detention and deportation.

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Featured

The Trump gold coin is not normal : Consider This from NPR

A federal design panel OK’d a Trump portrait for a commemorative gold coin, but the key question is whether Treasury can legally bypass long-standing limits meant to keep living politicians off U.S. money.

Mar 23, 2026

Featured

White House Confronted Over Huge Bets Made Minutes Before Trump’s Big War Move

A $580 million burst of oil-futures selling minutes before Trump’s Iran “talks” post raises a basic public-interest question: did anyone trade on advance knowledge of a market-moving national security decision?

Mar 24, 2026

Norms Impact

Iran Makes Veiled Threat to Trump: ‘Be Careful Not To Get Eliminated’

A president’s public vow to “obliterate” a foreign state in response to a personal assassination threat collapses national war powers into individualized retaliation, bypassing democratic guardrails.

Iran War

Mar 10, 2026

Sources

https://time.com/article/2026/03/10/iran-trump-Larijani-hormuz

Summary

Ali Larijani, Iran’s top security official, posted a warning that Donald Trump should “be careful not to get eliminated” after Trump threatened massive U.S. strikes if Iran blocks oil shipments through the Strait of Hormuz. The exchange places presidential war threats and personal assassination rhetoric into direct public signaling between national leadership, widening the space for escalation outside formal diplomatic channels. The practical consequence is a higher risk of rapid military action and retaliatory violence tied to individualized threats rather than accountable, deliberative decision-making.

Reality Check

When presidential force is publicly framed as personal retribution—“obliterate” a country if an individual is harmed—we normalize war-making language untethered from accountable process. This precedent erodes the expectation that lethal state power is exercised through institutional deliberation rather than a leader’s personal directives and threats. As these signals move onto social platforms and escalate in real time, the space for Congress, diplomacy, and transparent strategy shrinks, and the risk of rapid, irreversible military decisions grows. Our democracy’s guardrails weaken when the most consequential choices—war, retaliation, mass destruction—are conditioned as personal responses instead of governed acts.

Media

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Detail

Ali Larijani, identified as the head of Iran’s National Security Council and Secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, posted on X: “Iran doesn't fear your empty threats… Be careful not to get eliminated yourself.” The post followed Trump’s TruthSocial message warning that if Iran does not allow oil shipments to resume through the Strait of Hormuz, the U.S. would strike Iran “twenty times harder” and target sites he said would make it “virtually impossible for Iran to ever be built back.”

The context described includes a joint U.S.-Israeli attack on Iran entering its second week and a regional war following Israel’s assassination of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei on Feb. 28. Larijani previously said on Iranian television that he would hold Trump responsible for Khamenei’s death and is described as leading retaliatory strikes affecting Israel and Gulf countries.

The U.S. has accused Iran of past assassination attempts against Trump, which Iran has denied. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said a covert Iranian unit leader involved in planning an attempt was killed in a strike. Separately, U.S. prosecutions cited alleged Iran-linked plots targeting Trump and others.

Norms Impact

ISRAEL SAYS IRAN SUPREME LEADER KHAMENEI IS DEAD

A joint U.S.-Israel operation killed Iran’s head of state as the U.S. president urged Iranians to overthrow their government, fusing war-making with regime-change incitement.

Executive

Feb 28, 2026

Sources

https://www.axios.com/2026/02/28/iran-khamenei-killed-israel

Summary

Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei was killed Saturday in an Israeli strike during a massive joint U.S.-Israel military operation. The U.S. presidency is publicly pairing a bombing campaign with an explicit call for Iranians to overthrow their government. That precedent collapses the boundary between military force and regime-change incitement, raising the risk of wider war and long-term destabilization.

Reality Check

Normalizing presidential calls for a foreign population to overthrow its government while a U.S.-linked bombing campaign is underway lowers the threshold for executive-driven regime change without durable democratic consent. When targeted killing and political incitement are treated as a single tool, we weaken restraints on war powers and reduce Congress and the public to spectators. The precedent expands expectations that U.S. force can be used not only to deter threats but to engineer political outcomes abroad, increasing the risk of escalation and blowback that outlasts any single operation.

Detail

Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei was killed Saturday in an Israeli strike, Israel’s ambassador to Washington told U.S. officials. The strike occurred as part of a massive joint military operation between the United States and Israel.

Khamenei, 86, had led Iran for 35 years after taking power in 1989 following the death of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. His death triggers an immediate succession crisis with no stated successor.

In an overnight video address, President Trump told the Iranian people to remain in their homes during the bombing campaign and to rise up and “take over your government” when it concludes. The outcome inside Iran, including whether the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps moves to seize control, was described as unclear.